Friday, December 27, 2013

Jesse Jackson v Duck Commander

I haven't spent a lot of time here commenting on race hustlers like Jesse Hymietown Jackson. Best they be ignored, but this is just to rich to ignore.

Considering the, irReverend Jackson obvious bigotry while exploiting racial divisions for personal profit he pursues this adventure. With all his baggage I am constantly amazed anybody pays any attention to  this guy.

Jesse Jackson Calls ‘Duck Dynasty’ Star Phil Robertson’s Remarks About Blacks ‘Offensive’


Jesse Jackson is calling “Duck Dynasty” star Phil Robertson‘s comments
toGQ magazine about black people more offensive than the actions of the bus driver who ordered civil rights heroRosa Parks back to her seat when she challenged bus segregation in 1955.
“These statements uttered by Robertson are more offensive than the bus driver in Montgomery, Alabama, more than 59 years ago,” said Jackson in a statement obtained by ABC News. “At least the bus driver, who ordered Rosa Parks to surrender her seat to a white person, was following state law. Robertson’s statements were uttered freely and openly without cover of the law, within a context of what he seemed to believe was ‘white privilege.’”
Jackson is entitled to his ignorant opinion.
I'll leave it at that.







GLAAD QUACKS

It boggles my mind the controversy over a magazine interview published by GQ Magazine.

From what I learned GQ is a publication directed towards young men. The magazine is not the issue, nor should its interview with Phil Robertson.

Sure most everybody is aware of the show, Duck Dynasty. The leader/patriarch spoke his mind only to draw such ire and condemnation. 

He is not a political leader nor does it seem that he is on a crusade to deprive homosexuals of their civil rights.

So what is all the hub-bub about?

Interesting commentary:

Duck Dynasty and a Free Society 


Normally at this time of year, the culture-war fight is over a guy with a white beard. That’s true again this year. What’s different is that Phil Robertson took Santa’s place, and instead of a war on Christmas, we have a war on Duck Dynasty.
The patriarch of the popular A&E reality show said some crude things about homosexuals to GQmagazine. A&E was sufficiently offended that it suspended him from a show about his own family.

So far, the controversy understandably has been framed as a fight over free speech. My National Review colleague Mark Steyn writes: “Most Christian opponents of gay marriage oppose gay marriage; they don’t oppose the right of gays to advocate it. Yet thug groups like GLAAD increasingly oppose the right of Christians even to argue their corner. It’s quicker and more effective to silence them.”
I think Steyn has the causation right. The free-speech issues are the inevitable consequence of a venerable argument about what a free society is.


A well written commentary, worth the read.

Monday, December 23, 2013

Mikhail Kalashnikov, Dies at 94

Not clear to me how this happens. One man, of humble origins by his inventiveness designs a wonderful product which influences the course of world history.

I see credit for much of the creation of the AK-47 to be a lot of time and circumstance of History. I also suspect there is more to the story than the official record reveals.


Mikhail Kalashnikov, Creator of AK-47, Dies at 94



Lt. Gen. Mikhail T. Kalashnikov, the arms designer credited by the Soviet Union with creating the AK-47, the first in a series of rifles and machine guns that would indelibly associate his name with modern war and become the most abundant firearms ever made, died on Monday in Izhevsk, the capital of the Udmurtia republic, where he lived. He was 94.

Born a peasant on the southern Siberian steppe, General Kalashnikov had little formal education and claimed to be a self-taught tinkerer who combined innate mechanical skills with the study of weapons to conceive of a rifle that achieved battlefield ubiquity.


Tens of millions of Kalashnikov rifles have been manufactured. Their short barrels, steep front-sight posts and curved magazines made them a marker of conflict that has endured for decades. The weapons also became both Soviet and revolutionary symbols and
widespread instruments of terrorism, child-soldiering and crime.
The general, who sometimes lamented the weapons’ unchecked distribution but took pride in having invented them and in their reputation for reliability, weathered the collapse of the Soviet Union to assume a public role as a folk hero and unequivocal Russian patriot.

The weapon, he said, was designed to protect his motherland, not to be used by terrorists or thugs. “This is a weapon of defense,” he said. “It is not a weapon for offense.”

Annual Awards for Year's Worst Reporting

The end of the calendar year the season for reflections of the past twelve months is upon us. Such musing varies widely. This one, The Twenty-Sixth Annual Awards for the Year's Worst Reporting from News Busters tickles me.

Lest anybody missed it, I am a big fan of the Constitution of the United States, Bill of Rights and especially fond of the 2nd Amendment.




During the first half of 2013, liberals hoped they could leverage the tragedy of last year’s horrible shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, to push through their long-sought wish list of new federal gun restrictions, and the media cheered them on. Here are the quotes our judges designated as the worst of the worst.



Winning the category was CNN primetime host Piers Morgan, who dropped all pretense of objectivity and became an outspoken advocate for gun restrictions. On December 18 of last year, he used his CNN soapbox to hurl personal insults at a supporter of the Second Amendment:


Gun Owners of America executive director Larry Pratt: “I honestly don’t understand why you would rather have people be victims of a crime than be able to defend themselves. It’s incomprehensible.”
CNN host Piers Morgan: “You’re an unbelievably stupid man, aren’t you?...You have absolutely no coherent argument whatsoever....You don’t give a damn, do you, about the gun murder rate in America?...I know why sales of these weapons have been soaring in the last few days. It’s down to idiots like you. Mr. Pratt.... You are a dangerous man espousing dangerous nonsense. And you shame your country.”




Top runner-up was longtime NBC Nightly News anchor Tom Brokaw who, during a January 17 appearance on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, equated the push for more gun restrictions with those championing civil rights 50 years ago:




It is worth while to visit News Busters and sample other foolishness of the past year.

News Busters